I'm not volunteering to run it, but it might be time to consider such a test, if anyone is willing to run it. So I've started this thread to discuss it.

Apart from carpman, does anyone else think something like this is worthwhile? Would you participate?

These are my assumptions (please anyone feel free to jump in if you think they're wrong or you have different ideas or suggestions etc)...

1. We'll have lossless original source, lossyWAV intermediate, lossy-from-lossless and lossy-from-lossyWAV.2. We'll ABX (i) lossless vs lossy-from-lossless, (ii) lossless vs lossy-from-lossyWAV, (iii) lossy-from-lossless vs lossy-from-lossyWAV, and also ask participants whether they think lossy-from-lossless or lossy-from-lossyWAV is closer to the lossless original (in the last task, you need to know which is the original. Everything else is double-blind).

3. We should pick one version of lossyWAV, and one or two settings to test. e.g. standard and portable

4. We should pick between one and three lossy formats as target. I think mp3 is essential, vorbis is desirable, and AAC is optional.5. We should use lossy bitrates that people actually use - e.g., for mp3, somewhere between lame V2 and V5.

My initial comment is that I really don't like the look of item 2. It looks like a lot of hard work for the test participants, and I'm not sure which software is appropriate to do it. Maybe we could skip (i) and (ii). Maybe there's a better test methodology altogether (e.g. MUSHRA?).

Also, ambitious numbers of things to test under items 3-6 will easily lead to 100s of combinations (=tests) in total. This won't work. Need to focus, somehow.

If it is labeled as a pretest then the presentation could be informal - perhaps just offer links to the lossless sample files and a write a how-to guide. The testers could post their results directly to the forum thread. If someone would like to test a different lossy encoder or setting that would be fine because we would get more useful information.

I don't think there's a single sample been ABXed at standard for a while now - could be wrong.

As we use artifacts amplification they will be clearly audible, but resulting rating could be pretty high. The question is how high? In comparison with 320 kbit/s encoders for example. In any case the audio metrics that we use is new and the ratings should be accepted with care.

So standard preset is OK. lossyWAV 1.2.0 is the latest I suppose. If so I'm ready to add it.